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#thankstoLoving

Photo cred: Peter Thomsen Photography

A couple of weeks ago, the HBH (Hot Black Husband) and I sat down to watch Loving, the 2016 film about Richard and Mildred Loving. The Lovings, if you don’t know, were a Virginia-based couple whose interracial marriage took them all the way to the Supreme Court. Although they legally married in Washington, D.C. in 1958, their marriage was not recognized in their home state until the final decision in 1967.

If you haven’t yet watched it, head over to Amazon Prime or Fandango Live and watch it tonight. Begin to put together the puzzle pieces for how this relates to our culture and country and climate today.

As I wrote in a small post on Instagram yesterday, this is unfathomable to me. I take for granted my marriage to my husband, a man whose skin happens to be a rich shade of chocolate brown. I take for granted the fact that we were allowed to marry one another, just because we wanted to, just because it seemed like maybe God really had brought us together. And, the only thing standing in our way at that time was making sure we, as grown-ups, really were ready to make a life-long commitment to one another.

Here’s part of what I wrote over there:

Really, we’re less than seven years into marriage, which, if you do the math, means that we’re just finishing the first grade. We’ve got a long way to journey, still. But it’s unfathomable that fifty years age I couldn’t have married him. Fifty years ago it was still illegal. Fifty years ago his dad was just gearing up to fight his own battle toward equal rights for every human, no matter the color of their skin.

So, as you may have seen, a couple of friends and I decided to do something about it. And we’d love for you to join us.

We created the #thankstoLoving project. Join us, by posting a picture of you and your interracial love. To me, this pertains to my marriage – to you, it might instead relate to your partner or significant other. Perhaps your family is mixed-race, and that still makes you grateful for the Lovings. Whatever it is, share a picture, and then fill in the blanks. Tell us a story. (Hint: you can even start with the phrase “Thanks to Loving, I” if you need a prompt). Finally, be sure to include the hashtag #thankstoLoving so we can find you!

If this movement doesn’t pertain to you, you can still cheer us on. You can still spread the word. You can still encourage us in our most heart-laden relationships, because for some of us, we live in places that don’t make it easy to love the ones we love – especially if they don’t look like us.

Otherwise, here are a few images you can use to help promote the project. Feel free to share them on your favorite social media portal.

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Otherwise, thanks for being in my court. Expect to see my Instagram account filled with these images for the next couple of weeks – and after that, I expect it’ll be back to normal, hunkering down with pictures of the boys only a mother could love.

Spread the word. Join the movement!

x’s and o’s,

c.

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So, why are YOU grateful to Mildred and Richard Loving? How did this historic Civil Rights case change you for the better?

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Comments

The movie Loving was awesome and I cheer you on! So crazy that silly things like the color of your skin could make a relationship illegal! And while it is now legal, there are still some that look down in such beautiful relationships. Blows my mind!

Happily, California was way ahead of the rest of the nation in striking down the anti-miscegenation laws. Still, they never should have been on the books in the first place. Nothing but racism, ignorance and hate put them there.

I wrote about the subject in the first post I ever had, one that ran as a guest post on Jenny Rae Armstrong’s blog almost a year before I started my own site: They Want to Ruin My Marriage.